Watson: “As a doctor, as well as your friend, I strongly disapprove of this insidious habit of yours!”

Holmes: “My dear friend’ as well as my dear doctor, I only resort to narcotics, when I am suffering from acute boredom. When there are no interesting cases to engage my mind. Look at this: an urgent appeal to find some missing midgets!”

Watson: “Did you say ‘midgets’?

Holmes: “Hm. Six of them. ‘The Tumbling Piccolos’ — an acrobatic act at some circus.”

Watson (reading): “‘Disappeared between London and Bristol.’ Well, don’t you find that intriguing?

Holmes: “Extremely so. You see, they’re not only midgets. They’re also anarchists.”

Watson: ” Anarchists!”

Holmes: “By now, they’ve been smuggled to Vienna, dressed as little girls in organdy pinafores. They are to greet the Czar of all the Russians. When arrives at the railway station, they will be carrying bouquets of flowers…and concealed in each bouquet there will be a bomb with a lit fuse.”

Watson:”You really think so?”

Holmes:”Absolutely not. The circus owner offered me five pounds for my services. That’s not even a pound a midget! So, obviously, he’s a stingy bliger, and the little chaps simply ran off to join another circus.”

Watson: “It sounded so…promising.”

*
(Robin Stephens and Colin Blakely, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Mirisch Production Company, 1970)